High Strung: A Glass Bead Mystery (The Glass Bead Mystery Series) (15 page)

I called him up.

“Hey, little brother. How are you?”

“Yeah. Hey, Jax.” H
e sounded groggy.

“
I hope I’m not calling too late.”

“
Oh, no, Jax, it’s okay. I’m doing some late-night coding for a new software release we have coming up. I must’ve fallen asleep on the keyboard judging from the million letter Y’s typed across the screen and the keyboard-shaped dent on my forehead.”

This
wasn’t the first time I had called Andy late at night and found him working.

“
I have a favor to ask. Can you check up on a guy named Allen Sinclair? I have some suspicions about him, and I’m trying to figure out if I should trust him.” There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. “Bro?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, I’m still dazed. Go ahead.”

“He lives in Seattle, mid-forties, works at the
Seattle Times
. I don’t have much to go on other than that.”

“W
hat kind of crimes are we talking about?”

“
He’s a jewelry thief.”

“
You mean like diamonds and rubies?”

“
Glass beads. But they’re still precious.”

Andy seemed disappointed to hear we weren
’t talking about a heist of millions of dollars in gems.

“
Or it is possible he’s a murderer,” I added.

“
Now that would be more exciting than someone who steals beads,” Andy said. “Let me do some checking and see what I can find out. Too bad he has such a common name, that’ll make it harder to find him. Oh, and Jax, you might not want to mention this to anyone, because some of this, strictly speaking, falls outside of what is considered legal.”

“
Got it. Oh, and call Dad. The last time I talked with him, he said you never call.”

“
One favor at a time, Sis, one favor at a time.”

I laughed and hung up the phone
, hoping he was as much a wizard at digital breaking-and-entering as he claimed. And now, finally, I could sleep.

I was jolted awake by the phone. Tessa’s name blinked on the screen as it rang and rang.

“Tessa,
I’ll call you in the morning,” I said sleepily into my pillow, not answering the phone. Then it stopped ringing.

Thank God.

And then my phone started ringing again. This time I answered.

“Tessa
?”

“
Jax! We can’t find Izzy. She said she’d be home at 10:00.”

“
What time is it?” I said squinting at the alarm clock. Its red numbers glowed: 10:45. I hadn’t been asleep for more than a half hour. “Why didn’t you call her and tell her to get her butt home?”

“
I’ve called her a million times. She’s not answering.” I could hear the panic in Tessa’s voice.

“
Don’t you have a fancy GPS thing in your minivan?”

“
I do, and for the last hour the dot on the map in program shows the van hasn’t moved.”

“T
hat’s good news, right? You know where Izzy is.” That wasn’t entirely true. We knew the location of the van, but we didn’t know if her daughter was with the van or not. Next time, Tessa was going to have to strap a GPS unit directly onto her teenage daughter.

“
Why isn’t she answering her phone? If she’d just answer, then I could get some rest, knowing she was okay, or I could rescue her if she needed help.”

Finally
, I was awake enough to think about this clearly. “Tessa? You confiscated her phone. It’s locked in a drawer at your studio.”

“
Che casino! Dio mio!”
Tessa had slipped into Italian, and that only happened when she was extremely upset or drunk. It was a side-effect of all the years she’d spent in Italy after she graduated from high school.

“What’s ‘c
asino’? ‘Dio’ what? Tessa! Speak English!”

“
Oh, Jax, this is a mess. What are we going to do?”

“
Let’s focus here,” I said in my calmest voice, although on the inside I was panicking nearly as much as Tessa was. “Where does the GPS say Izzy is?”

“Next to
Schmitz Park.”

“
Where’s Craig?” I asked.

“
He’s on his way out to the park to see if he can find her.”

“
And he left you at home?” I asked, puzzled that she wouldn’t have gone with Craig.

“
It seemed like I should stay home in case she showed up here.”

“It seems to
me
that the more people who are looking for her, the better. Besides, if she shows up at home, Ashley can call you. You haven’t lost her, right?”

“No, you
’re right. Why didn’t I go with Craig?
Mama mia
—”

“Tessa
? Tessa?” I urged her to listen before she slipped into Italian again. “Hold on a minute. I’m going to come and get you. We’ll go and look for her. It’s better for more people to search—more people to cover more ground.”

As I talked with her, I hopped on one foot and then the other
, juggling the phone as I pulled on jeans and sneakers. I grabbed my purse and a sweatshirt and jumped into the Ladybug. The sky was clear, and I put the top down, hoping the chilly Seattle night would keep me awake, although with the amount of adrenaline coursing through me, I probably didn’t need to. I sped toward Tessa’s house.

As I drove
, I couldn’t stop thinking about the delicate wrist with the tiny tattoo I’d seen in the dumpster earlier today. Misty was someone’s daughter, and she was dead. That couldn’t be undone. I pushed away the thoughts of Izzy in danger. Izzy was going to be fine.

Tessa was waiting on the curb for me, wrapped in a big sweater, her arms crossed to keep out the night
’s chill. She got in my car and we sped off to find Izzy.

Schmitz Park was a rambling recreation area close to downtown Seattle. While it
wasn’t wilderness, it did have enough trails and secluded areas to make it an unsafe place for a girl to be late at night.

“M
aybe the minivan broke down. She’d just flag someone down for help.” As soon as I said it, I realized I shouldn’t have.

“
Oh yes, some homicidal maniac would pull over to help her.” Tessa’s voice cracked as she started rummaging through her purse, looking for something. “Or worse!”

“
Worse? What could be worse than a homicidal maniac?” I asked, but again, I thought I was leading this conversation in the wrong direction.

Tessa pulled out her phone.
“I can look at the tracking device on the van and see where she is.” Tessa was taping on the phone’s screen. “Here’s the map, let me just zoom in. Okay, see the blue dot that’s flashing? That’s where the van has been for the last hour.”

I hated to be the one who kept making things worse, but I needed Tessa to think about what we knew, and what we didn
’t know. “Tessa, we know where the minivan is, not where Izzy is. She could be with it, or she could have left the van.”

“
What do you mean ‘left the van?’” Tessa was nearly hysterical, grabbing the collar of my sweatshirt and pulling me close, as if the closer I was, the clearer I’d be.

“
I’m thinking maybe she just stopped for, I don’t know, a burger,” I said, back-pedaling from a scarier scenario, and pulling myself away from her so I could drive safely.

“
At 10:45 at night?” she asked.

“
I don’t know. All I’m saying is there could be a completely reasonable explanation for what has happened to Izzy.” I was grasping at straws, I had no idea where Izzy was, or what she was doing. All I knew was at this moment she wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

“
If this is some crazy thing Izzy decided to do for fun, she will be grounded for the rest of her life.”

I didn’t doubt
it.

As
I sped along toward the park, I thought about Tessa and me, best friends for as long as I could remember.



I had called Tessa as soon as I’d made my decision to move to Seattle. She’d moved there after returning from several years in Italy, newly married to Craig, the most non-Italian guy I’d ever met. And she met him in Italy. He’d been an intern at the American Embassy when they met, and the rest is history.

“
Tessa, you’ll never believe it. I’m moving to Seattle.”

“That would be great,
Jax,” she said, nearly shouting. “That would be amazing.”

“You remember Great-Aunt Rita?” I asked.

“Of course, she made all of those wonderful quilts,” Tessa said.

“When she passed away, I inherited her house.”

“Where is it?” Tessa asked.

“I haven’t seen the house, and I’m really curious about it. Apparently it’s
located in the Queen Anne district. What do you think? Is that a scummy neighborhood?”

“No, Jax,
it’s a terrific area.”

“
Can you drive by and check it out? I want to make sure it isn’t a burned-out building. I don’t want to give up my entire life here in Miami to move to the other side of the country and live in a falling-down shack.” I’d already told Mr. Prescott I was coming, but I supposed I could back out if the house was truly uninhabitable. Then the lawyer would sell it, and donate the money to charity. And I’d be stuck here in Miami. I hoped Tessa would call me back with good news.

“
Sure. What’s the address?”

Tessa called back
forty-five minutes later. She must have left immediately after our phone call, and sped over there and back. She was a notoriously fast driver, and between that and her disaster of a van, she was hell on wheels.

“
Jax, the house is the most gorgeous thing ever. It’s a giant Craftsman house.”

“A bungalow?”

“Way bigger than a bungalow, more like a BIG-galow. It has two doors right at the front. It looks like it’s two units.”

“
That’s right, Great-Aunt Rita made it into a duplex.”

“
Well your Great-Aunt Rita was a genius. The place needs some work, but it has nice weathered shingles, with a pretty burgundy trim. It has a nice long driveway on one side, and a small garden in front.”

“Weathered shingles and b
urgundy trim sound great, so does a garden.”

“
It needs some TLC, but you’re the woman to do it.”

“As long as I can do the work over time, and can live in it right away, I can do it. It has a roof, right?”

“Yes, silly, it has a roof. So? You’re really coming?” Tessa asked.

“
I am. Give me a week, and I’ll be there.”

…

Tessa called Craig to tell him we were on our way to the park to help search for Izzy. He tried to discourage us from coming, but Craig and I both knew there was no stopping Tessa.

Tessa had her eyes glued to the tiny screen with the blue dot. It was her only connection to her daughter at that moment. I wasn
’t sure whether she wanted to see the blinking spot moving, or not, but I knew she was thinking all sorts of terrible thoughts, and only finding her girl was going to make things better.

We parked on a residential street next to the park
, and I grabbed my flashlight from the Ladybug’s trunk. Tessa and I walked up the wide trail into the darkness. Up ahead we saw the outline of the van, and when Tessa spotted it, she started running toward it. I could hear Craig’s voice calling for us, but I couldn’t see him. When I finally reached the van, we saw Craig—and Izzy was with him. They appeared at the top of a hill, coming down a long path flanked by redwoods. Tessa leaned against the side of the van and started sobbing in relief, releasing all of the tension she’d been holding in. Izzy ran ahead of her dad and collapsed into her mother’s arms, pressing her face against Tessa’s chest.

“
Mom, I’m so sorry. I was looking for this big party some friends were having at Alki Beach, and I got lost. I didn’t have my phone so I couldn’t figure out where I was.”

“
But what about the map in the glove compartment?” Tessa asked, pulling her daughter back to look her in the eye.

“
I thought there were just gloves in the glove compartment.” Oh, Izzy, she had many things to learn. “And then I ran out of gas…”

“
Because you didn’t use the money I gave you yesterday to fill up the tank.”

“
I just kinda forgot,” Izzy sobbed. “I’m sorry, I will be the best daughter ever for the rest of my life if you’ll just understand I didn’t mean to do this.”

Craig had reached us and had taken off his coat and wrapped it around Izzy, who was dressed in
only a light sweater and jeans. It was a way he could protect her even if only for a short time. Izzy was growing up, and she’d be spending more time away from home in the next few years. I hoped she wouldn’t have too many scary adventures like this. I didn’t want to keep rescuing Tessa, and her daughter, in the middle of the night.

“
Why didn’t you go to a house in this neighborhood and ask for help?” Craig asked.

“
The houses were all dark. It was too spooky.” The logic of a sixteen-year-old girl was hard to understand. “So I saw a sign for Alki, and I thought if I could just get to my friends, they could help me with the car.”

“
You headed off into the darkness to find your friends?” Tessa asked, trying to clarify the completely illogical thought process Izzy had used.

“
Yes, Mommy, I’m so sorry,” Izzy said. I noted her use of the word “Mommy.” This was Izzy’s way of being endearing. I’m sure she hoped to avoid any unpleasant punishment by being as adorable as possible.

“
Let’s all get home, okay?” said Craig. “We’ll leave the van here and get some gas for it tomorrow.”

Izzy opted to go with her dad, figuring, I suppose
d, it was safer to go home with him than face the intense questioning that would occur if she’d have come back with Tessa and me.

“
She is grounded for life, but I am glad we found her before anything terrible had happened,” Tessa said. “When I saw her running toward us, I was so happy and angry at the same time. I wanted to spank her and hug her.”

“
Don’t you think she’s too old to spank? And isn’t spanking a bad thing these days?”

“Y
es on both counts, but I am allowed to feel it, even if I don’t actually do it, right?”

I
wasn’t a mother myself, but I certainly had the desire to spank my current houseguest and her dog. Clearly I was starting to lose my mind from lack of sleep as I fantasized about putting both of them over my knee. I decided it was time to change the topic, before I had any more sleep-deprived imagery in my brain. “I guess Izzy now knows you have a tracking device in your van.”